The soul which animates Nature is not less sigshed in the figure, movement, and gesture of animated bodies, than in
its last vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtile language is Manners; not what, but
how. Life expresses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature
tells every secret once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts
of the face, and by the whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the individual, as resulting
from his organization and his will combined, we call manners. What are they but thought entering the hands and feet,
controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior?

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things;
each once a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with
which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give
such a depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other. Consuelo, in the
romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage; and, in real life, Talma taught
Napoleon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by
the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode.

The power of manners is incessant, — an element as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be
disguised, and no more in a republic or a democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There are
certain manners which are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be
considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and
accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning
or owning them: they solicit him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the
boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and nearness of
leading persons of their own sex; where they might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman of
fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not
known to them; but when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront her, and recover their
self-possession.

Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle
learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners are always under examination,
and by committees little suspected, — a police in citizens’ clothes, — but are awarding or denying you very high prizes
when you least think of it.

We talk much of utilities, — but ‘tis our manners that associate us. In hours of business, we go to him who knows,
or has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way. But this activity
over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease with; those who will go where we go, whose
manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we reflect on their persuasive and cheering force;
how they recommend, prepare, and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the members; how manners make
the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries
manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character
they convey; and what divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph, we see what range the
subject has, and what relations to convenience, power, and beauty.

Their first service is very low, — when they are the minor morals: but ‘tis the beginning of civility, — to make us,
I mean, endurable to each other. We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of the
quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set up on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel them
to be clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, and choose the generous expression, and
make them know how much happier the generous behaviors are.

Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey
upon the rest, and whom, a public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can
reach:— the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of
a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight:— I have seen men
who neigh like a horse when you contradict them, or say something which they do not understand:— then the overbold, who
make their own invitation to your hearth; the persevering talker, who gives you his society in large, saturating doses;
the pitiers of themselves, — a perilous class; the frivolous Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand
to twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity; — these are social inflictions which the magistrate
cannot cure or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and proverbs, and
familiar rules of behavior impressed on young people in their school-days.

In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, that “no
gentleman can be permitted to come to the public table without his coat;” and in the same country, in the pews of the
churches, little placards plead with the worshipper against the fury of expectoration. Charles Dickens
self-sacrificingly undertook the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable particulars. I think the lesson was
not quite lost; that it held bad manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the book had its
own deformities. It ought not to need to print in a reading-room a caution to strangers not to speak loud; nor to
persons who look over fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs and butterflies’ wings; nor to persons
who look at marble statues, that they shall not smite them with canes. But, even in the perfect civilization of this
city, such cautions are not quite needless in the Athenaeum and City Library.

Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstance as well as out of character. If you look at the pictures of
patricians and of peasants, of different periods and countries, you will see how well they match the same classes in
our towns. The modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian’s Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but
also in the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands and great interests not
only arrive to such heads as can manage them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of
rank, or see in the manners the degree of homage the party is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day to
be courted and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of
receiving and replying to this homage.

There are always exceptional people and modes. English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and,
under the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Nature and Destiny are honest, and
never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every quality. It is much to conquer one’s face,
and perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole secret when he has learned, that disengaged manners are
commanding. Don’t be deceived by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts,
an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability
of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;
— little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. When he sat
down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: but underneath all this
irritability, was a puissant will, firm, and advancing, and a memory in which lay in order and method like geologic
strata every fact of his history, and under the control of his will.

Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all culture is
vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the
old world, has some reason in common experience. Every man — mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant, — looks with
confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which he would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger.
The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. “Take a thorn-bush,” said the emir Abdel-Kader, “and sprinkle it for
a whole year with water; — it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will
always produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is a bush of thorns.”

A main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful expressiveness of the human body. If it were made of glass,
or of air, and the thoughts were written on steel tablets within, it could not publish more truly its meaning than now.
Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is
bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the
whole movement. They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the
curious how it is with them. The face and eyes reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The
eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through how many forms it has already ascended. It almost violates the
proprieties, if we say above the breath here, what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter to every street
passenger.

Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found men who could see
the satellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel us. The birds have a longer sight,
beside the advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. A cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the
eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The jockeys say of certain horses, that “they look over the whole
ground.” The out-door life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. A farmer looks out at you as
strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or
can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with
joy.

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a
distance; in enumerating the names of persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink at each
new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. “An artist,” said
Michel Angelo, “must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye;” and there is no end to the catalogue of
its performances, whether in indolent vision, (that of health and beauty,) or in strained vision, (that of art and
labor.)

Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They
wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age, or rank; they respect neither poverty nor
riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you,
in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another, through them! The
glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves
all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the
will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self,
and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations are sometimes
terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is there made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of
owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity. ‘Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit
that appears at the windows of the house does at once invest himself in a new form of his own, to the mind of the
beholder.

The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary,
but is understood all the world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practised man relies on
the language of the first. If the man is off his centre, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion,
whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it. There is a look by which a man shows he is going
to say a good thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine offers and offices of
hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by
the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen, he has said nothing, and no important remark
has been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society, he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a
stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no
more admission into the man than blueberries. Others are liquid and deep, — wells that a man might fall into; — others
are aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and require crowded Broadways, and
the security of millions, to protect individuals against them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling under
clerical, now under rustic brows. ‘Tis the city of Lacedaemon; ‘tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes,
asserting eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate, — some of good, and some of sinister omen. The alleged power to
charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the will,
before it can be signified in the eye. ‘Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his
rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to
his personal presence. Whoever looked on him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were generous and
universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features have their own. A man finds room in the few
square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express
strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest “the
terrors of the beak.” What refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! “Beware you don’t laugh,” said the wise
mother, “for then you show all your faults.”

Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called “Theorie de la demarche,” in which he says: “The look,
the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given to man, the power to
stand guard, at once, over these four different simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch that one which speaks
out the truth, and you will know the whole man.”

Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, which, in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them,
are raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech,
an embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and Saint
Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and R;oederer, and an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct you, if you wish,
in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a point of pride with kings, to remember faces and names. It is reported of one
prince, that his head had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. There are people who come in
ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was said of the late Lord Holland, that he always came down to
breakfast with the air of a man who had just met with some signal good-fortune. In “Notre Dame,” the grandee
took his place on the dais, with the look of one who is thinking of something else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop
at palace-doors.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may not. The
enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding himself not in their
element. They all have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from
his companions, it is then the enthusiast’s turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they
must fight the battle out on their private strengths. What is the talent of that character so common, — the successful
man of the world, — in all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms? Manners: manners of power; sense to see his advantage,
and manners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows that troops behave as they are handled at first; — that is his
cheap secret; just what happens to every two persons who meet on any affair, — one instantly perceives that he has the
key of the situation, that his will comprehends the other’s will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has only to use
courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance.

The theatre in which this science of manners has a formal importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles,
wherein, after the close of the day’s business, men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment, in ornamented
drawing-rooms. Of course, it has every variety of attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens
who have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to
amuse the other, — yet the high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffering for a chair;
that all the talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated air: it spoiled the best persons: it put all on
stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies written and read. The aspect of that man is repulsive; I do not wish to
deal with him. The other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks humble and manly: I choose him. Look on
this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you; but all see her gladly;
her whole air and impression are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught
cold in coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are creep-mouse manners; and thievish manners.
“Look at Northcote,” said Fuseli; “he looks like a rat that has seen a cat.” In the shallow company, easily excited,
easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard: the Alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. Here are the
sweet following eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she demanded the heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind
than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude’s manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better manners than she; for
the movements of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to express
every thought by instant action.

Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is
shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its
instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages
the party attacked; the second is still more effective, but is not to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is
not easily found. People grow up and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth, ascribing the
solitude which acts on them very injuriously, to any cause but the right one.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. Those who are
not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. They fear to
offend, they bend and apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a
well-dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circumstance. The
hero should find himself at home, wherever he is: should impart comfort by his own security and good-nature to all
beholders. The hero is suffered to be himself. A person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him an immunity is
secured so long as he renders to society that service which is native and proper to him, — an immunity from all the
observances, yea, and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of its members. “Euripides,”
says Aspasia, “has not the fine manners of Sophocles; but,” — she adds good-humoredly, “the movers and masters of our
souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world that belongs to them, and
before the creatures they have animated.” 1

Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and
respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command. Here
comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. ‘Tis a
great destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large leisures, but contrariwise should be balked by
importunate affairs.

But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is ever shining. ‘Tis hard to keep the what from breaking
through this pretty painting of the how. The core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen perception
overpower old manners, and create new; and the thought of the present moment has a greater value than all the past. In
persons of character, we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness. We are surprised by the thing done,
out of all power to watch the way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the great style which runs
through the actions of such. People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as
academic or civil presidents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, and a good
deal on each other, by these fames. At least, it is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations
tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in
Paris the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and make themselves as
inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. “I had received,” said a sibyl, “I had
received at birth the fatal gift of penetration:” — and these Cassandras are always born.

Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented
expression, which everybody reads. And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making him the kind
of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for
effect, is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and
honor, because he was not lying in wait for these. The things of a man for which we visit him, were done in the dark
and the cold. A little integrity is better than any career. So deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even
the size of your companion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not only is he larger, when at ease, and his
thoughts generous, but everything around him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter’s rule, no rod and chain,
will measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into the house: if the proprietor is constrained and
deferring, ‘tis of no importance how large his house, how beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to the end of all:
but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely large and interesting,
the roof and dome buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits there
massive, cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian colossi.

Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older
than Sanscrit; but they who cannot yet read English, can read this. Men take each other’s measure, when they meet for
the first time, — and every time they meet. How do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each
other’s power and dispositions? One would say, that the persuasion of their speech is not in what they say, — or, that
men do not convince by their argument, — but by their personality, by who they are, and what they said and did
heretofore. A man already strong is listened to, and everything he says is applauded. Another opposes him with sound
argument, but the argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the mind of some weighty person; then it begins to
tell on the community.

Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too much
demonstration. In this country, where school education is universal, we have a superficial culture, and a profusion of
reading and writing and expression. We parade our nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working them up into
happiness. There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand it, — ‘whatever is known to thyself alone, has
always very great value.’ There is some reason to believe, that, when a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by
other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often
nothing poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi said, that “when a man has fully expressed his thought, he has
somewhat less possession of it.” One would say, the rule is, — What a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and
us. In explaining his thought to others, he explains it to himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts him.

Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of
manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the
surface, and treat this part of life more worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The
novels used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and girl they described. The boy was to be
raised from a humble to a high position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the object of the story was to
supply him with one or both. We watched sympathetically, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is
gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the gala procession home to the castle, when the doors are slammed in
our face, and the poor reader is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea, or a virtuous
impulse.

But the victories of character are instant, and victories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are fortified by
every heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the best of life is
conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people. ‘Tis a French
definition of friendship, rien que s’entendre, good understanding. The highest compact we can make with our
fellow, is, — ‘Let there be truth between us two forevermore.’ That is the charm in all good novels, as it is the charm
in all good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, from the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound trust
in each other. It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not
reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance: I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, I know it was
right.

In all the superior people I have met, I notice directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything of
obstruction, of malformation, had been trained away. What have they to conceal? What have they to exhibit? Between
simple and noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence: they recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground
than the talents and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness. For, it is not what
talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man that
stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by the
Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell: but, such was the
eloquence and good-humor of the monk, that, wherever he went he was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the
most uncivil angels: and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his
part, and adopted his manners: and even good angels came from far, to see him, and take up their abode with him. The
angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him, attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better
success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to praise in every place and company,
though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that
sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could be found that would burn him; for that, in whatever condition, Basle
remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was
canonized as a saint.

There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the latter was
King of Spain, and complained that he missed in Napoleon’s letters the affectionate tone which had marked their
childish correspondence. “I am sorry,” replies Napoleon, “you think you shall find your brother again only in the
Elysian Fields. It is natural, that at forty, he should not feel towards you as he did at twelve. But his feelings
towards you have greater truth and strength. His friendship has the features of his mind.”

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of
books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them! Here is a lesson which I brought
along with me in boyhood from the Latin School, and which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was
accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take arms against the Republic. But he, full of
firmness and gravity, defended himself in this manner: “Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus Scaurus, President
of the Senate, excited the allies to arms: Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, denies it. There is no witness.
Which do you believe, Romans?” “Utri creditis, Quirites?” When he had said these words, he was absolved by the
assembly of the people.

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine
us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly.
But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control: you
shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power
at rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like
the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. ‘Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night’s lodging. ‘Tis better
to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as
we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. Special precepts are not to be thought
of: the talent of well-doing contains them all. Every hour will show a duty as paramount as that of my whim just now;
and yet I will write it, — that there is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals,
namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or
leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which all
the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans. Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do
not leave the sky out of your landscape. The oldest and the most deserving person should come very modestly into any
newly awaked company, respecting the divine communications, out of which all must be presumed to have newly come. An
old man who added an elevating culture to a large experience of life, said to me, “When you come into the room, I think
I will study how to make humanity beautiful to you.”

As respects the delicate question of culture, I do not think that any other than negative rules can be laid down.
For positive rules, for suggestion, Nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect
manners? — the golden mean is so delicate, difficult, — say frankly, unattainable. What finest hands would not be
clumsy to sketch the genial precepts of the young girl’s demeanor? The chances seem infinite against success; and yet
success is continually attained. There must not be secondariness, and ‘tis a thousand to one that her air and manner
will at once betray that she is not primary, but that there is some other one or many of her class, to whom she
habitually postpones herself. But Nature lifts her easily, and without knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we
are continually surprised with graces and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable.